The Early Learning Center: Focus on Play as Science

We are happy to have the opportunity to share our love of learning and young children with you. While we are a special purpose preschool with a focus on special education needs, we develop our curriculum to meet the needs of the whole child. Young children learn best through play. We’d like to share Maine’s Early Learning and Development Standards and some of our favorite pictures of the ELC children demonstrating those skills through play in our classrooms.

When you see me combing the bushes for bugs,

Or packing my pockets with choice things I find,

Don’t pass it off as “Just Play.”

For, you see, I’m learning as I play.

I may be a scientist someday.

MAINE’S EARLY LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS – Science

Young children are born investigators. Children are curious problem-solvers, seeking to understand the world about them every day. Through early science experiences, these young learners explore, invent, investigate, question, discover and note changes in their environment. In doing so, they learn new words to describe and classify the world they experience, apply math knowledge, and use these tools to deepen their understanding of the world about them.